What is the purpose of our life?

Please enjoy the following Sahaja Yoga talk in which Shri Mataji talks about seeking and the purpose of our lives. This talk took place on the 21st November 1979 in Caxton Hall, London (from Seeking in the West).

“Now what is the Self we are talking about? What is Self-realization? As I said, you can take it as a theory for you. You can accept it as a theory for the time being. But then if it is a hypothesis, it has to be proved. Give yourself a chance. Do not jump into conclusions suddenly. Pay some attention to yourself. You have been running a rat-race. Stop it for a while. This is for you, only for you people. I don’t need it; you have to get it. It’s a gift. But that should not make your ego just stand up like that. After all, a mother can give you a gift, isn’t it? What is there to be so angry about it?

Now, the thing that we are talking about is the Self within us, in our heart. He resides within us. We should say “it” resides, it’s better, because it does not have any bias, it is detached. It is the reflection of God Almighty which is called as the light, the light that enlightens, that light that flickers within us. That is the Self. That is the Spirit. That’s not spirit the way people understand the spiritualist. This is your own expression of the reflection of God within you. God is reflecting in your heart, of which you are aware, but you cannot see through it. You need to follow my point, this one. There is light. Light enlightens, there is the flame, the light, and this light enlightens everything. There are three things. The one that is to be enlightened has to know the One that enlightens it. You’ve got your life, you are leading a human life, you are a human being. God has made you a human being. Or evolution has made you a human being. If you feel challenged even if I take the name of God, all right, let us keep it that you are a human being because of evolution, all right.

Now this human being has to know that One, the One who has brought forth this evolution. Do we know how we have become human beings? Do we know why we have become human beings? Is there is any purpose to our life? Or we are just born here to enjoy life and die, or cry and weep and die? There is something to be known, but we have not known it. So all these three things are in one personality, that is, the Self.

Now, these personalities are expressed within us in three ways. First is our attention. Through our evolution we have developed a personality by which we have a human attention. Attention is spread out like that. But directed attention is called as laksha in Sanskrit language. So we have two types of attention. One is the attention as it is, and once you put your attention to something, that is another attention, we can say, or the directed attention. This attention we have developed through our evolution; is within us, but is not yet, though directed towards Self, has not reached that.

So this Self, this Spirit, this Atma has got to enlighten that attention that is ours, because our attention is not enlightened. We have no discrimination. We are so confused. We don’t know which to believe, which not to believe. We don’t know why … is correct, or … is correct. We are so confused. Our attention is confused. Why? Because we haven’t found out the Absolute. Why? Because in the darkness we are seeing our things. If our attention is enlightened, then we can see everything clearly, but is only possible if you touch that Spirit within you, that light within you. So you are attention, you are Chit, but unenlightened one. So human attention has reached a certain stage of development, but is not yet enlightened. I say so; you believe it or not, but it has to be enlightened. I say so, and it has to be done, which you also ask for.

So the Spirit can be only known through the enlightened attention which you have, and it can be only enlightened by the light. This is the problem. Once you understand that there is a flicker within us which we cannot reach, there is Somebody who knows about us everything, Kshetragna, knows about the field, what we do. But we cannot attain that. Though we are aware of it, His being there, there is some sort of a curtain in between. What is that curtain? – is of ignorance. This ignorance also can go, only if there is light: again the same problem. There is a curtain of ignorance, and we cannot see that light which has to enlighten, because the curtains are drawn. We are in complete ignorance. So the ignorance has to go, by discovering the truth about it.
So we come to the second point, that is the truth. Now, what is the truth, people will ask, what is the truth? Without the light, how can we explain? Supposing you find a rope lying on the road or somewhere, and you’re frightened. How are you to be convinced that it is not a snake but it’s just a rope lying, unless and until you put some light on that, and show for definite that this is just a rope and a myth? So your attention has to be enlightened, first thing, and to get rid of your ignorance you have to find out the truth. And then you know that the Self, the Spirit emits joy, joy which is beyond the duality of sorrow and happiness. You have to go beyond that, beyond the duality, to be that. That’s your destination.

So how to reach to that, is the problem. There is a way inside us, already created within us. The One who has created you, the One who has made you a human being, is going to arrange for you the same thing within you. Every seed has got a primule, a germinating power within it, and it grows spontaneously by itself, and it can create a tree. Then, is it not possible that God Himself has to worry about His own creation, which has flowered into human beings, that He should Himself do something about it? It’s absolutely rational.

How much truth have you found out so far? Whatever is subjective in you, is the truth. The rest is only your endeavour, on your effort. Say, for example, if you know this is hot or cold, of course that is truth, that is subjective. If you can feel the numbness, yes, that is subjective. If you feel pins and needles, that is subjective. All the rest of it, whatever you do, is your effort, is to read something or to write something, or to inform something. God knows how much part of it is the truth and how much is not.

So the idea of truth itself is so confused, because the means of knowing the truth is so limited within our… You have to become with your Self as absolutely identified, then you can see through it what is the truth and what is not the truth. But so far, as a human being, what have we discovered so far? That there is a moon hanging in the air or in the atmosphere, and that you go and find the same sort of thing that is here. That’s not the truth, by any chance.

Who has made the moon and the earth? Who has made even us, this brain, which takes you to the moon? No questions have been answered by science so far. If you ask one simple question, why there is gravity in the Mother Earth? Why? One question, why? You ask the scientists, they cannot answer. It’s just whatever is there. You see this hall is made, all right. Then you have seen this is how it is made. Yes, it is before you. You see it. What is so special? What is to discover in it? How it is supported, why it is supported. But still why? Why is so much weight there supports so much of weight? Why? So, no questions can be answered.

Why are we human beings? Because the truth that we have found out is through our rationality, which is a limited thing, which can only tell you whatever is in the matter around us, or whatever you see in the human psyche that’s happening, which you can see clearly. But why it happens, nobody can say.

So with that, we should not develop an inferiority complex. No, that is the amount of achievement you have got now. You have to go further with it, that’s all. Not to feel inferior or in any way confused about it, or in any way guilty about anything, but just to be in the center to see that we have reached a certain point, and we have to go further, finished. This is what you are seeking today: your wholesomeness. You are seeking in that, because you are just moving alone, and you are not related to the moon. You do not know how you are related to England. You do not know how you are related to your own wife, or your children, everything. That evolution, the last bit of it where the instrument is completely created, and that evolution where you have to jump into that higher evolution, into that personality which can perceive, which can perceive, I said. Again I’m talking about actualization, which can perceive, can feel as a subjective experience, not as an objective experience, like for a poet, I would say, stand here and give you a big romantic scene out of this snow. And you may get into that imagination and enjoy it, but again you come down straight on the grass, on the ground. I am saying “the subjective experience,” means that is to be built in your awareness. It’s not just to be believed into or imagined into, but it has to be built in you, like a flower becoming a fruit. It is no imagination.

So then only you can get enlightened. Your attention will be enlightened. When the attention is enlightened within you, naturally you start seeing things from the real angle. The thing that looked like a snake to you becomes a rope. A person who looked like a bad person, starts looking something different, because you couldn’t see the person. The whole entire personality changes gradually, but this movement can be very slow in some people, absolute snail’s pace, and in some people it is very fast. It trips very fast, depending on what sort of loads you have on your head, on your attention. If your attention is too involved and too much into … and too much into all kinds of absurd things, you see, then it takes time. But if you’re like a child, it works very fast and the impact is very great. Then also not to feel bad about it, that if you do not get it very fast, it’s all right. I have patience, and you should have patience with yourself.

So this is the spiritual contract we have to have within ourselves, is that, that you have to have your experience because it is promised to you. You have to get it, and that you have to love yourself as I love you.”

HH Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi